


In The Fullness Of Time

by FiliTheLionKing (IAmYourWatson)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Epilogue, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Old Together, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 14:23:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmYourWatson/pseuds/FiliTheLionKing
Summary: The night before...The years after...And what lies beyond.The Magnificent Seven become The Magnificent Nine when they barely survive the Battle of Rose Creek. Time moves on, and so do they. A brief tale of love, life, death, and sorrow...and, perhaps, a peaceful end to a long journey.





	In The Fullness Of Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Krit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krit/gifts).

> I wrote this in less than an hour for Krit because she's currently out of commission. This was originally written in Discord and is un-beta'd, so if you see any mistakes, let me know!

Flesh against flesh.

The slick slide of sweat-drenched skin.

Moans and whispers, sighs and growls.

The staccato rhythm of sex and its inevitable climax.

Blood rushing to the surface of their skin.

One lover laid bare beneath the other. One lover thrusting into the other's tight heat. Two bodies aching to become one, even if it's only for a brief moment. Two souls trying to touch through skin and bone.

Their eyes were only for each other. Their lips caressed burning skin. Their hands held onto shoulders and hips, their grip so tight that there would be bruises come morning. They _wanted_ the bruises, the reminders of this night.

This might be their last night together.

Tomorrow, the battle would rage. Tomorrow held no promise of victory, only pain and suffering and, perhaps, a righteous death. The day after that might as well not exist. No words were spoken. No words were needed. Their time together had been brief, but it was enough to know that their souls would be bound forever.

A gasp. A moan. Ecstasy. Exhaustion.

Tangled together as the moon began to set, Alejandro Vasquez and Joshua Faraday stared into each other's eyes, willing their lover's face into their memory.

If they died tomorrow, then they wanted the last thing they would ever see to be the face of their lover, flushed with sex and adoration.

The sky began to turn blue. The sun began to rise.

They would give anything to make this night last forever, but alas, the world would never be so kind.

_I love you._

_Te amo._

The dawn bell rang. The night was gone.

* * *

They were old now.

Somehow, they had survived. They were broken, but alive, and that was all that mattered. Seven became nine when they finally left Rose Creek. For years they wandered together, righting wrongs and watching the world become smaller and smaller.

Rose Creek was gone now. Not even a ghost town remained. They might as well have never rebuilt the church. It was all gone, mere dust in the wind and a few rows of broken gravestones.

* * *

Jack was the first to go. They had all expected it. He settled down with Leni Frankel somewhere along the California coast, two old souls content to live at the last remaining edge of the frontier.

The Spanish influenza took them both. Leni first, and then Jack three weeks later.

* * *

Surprisingly, _Teddy_ was the next to pass on. Something was wrong with his heart, but no one knew what it was. He grew frail and weak; he was barely 40 when he drew his last breath.

Red Harvest, who only ever became gentle around Teddy Q, who never seemed to leave his side, who had once been one of the strongest voices in the nine, never spoke again.

They settled in the town where Teddy Q's grave lay, and there they built their final homes.

* * *

Sam took a bullet to the chest. He lay in the doctor's back room for six days, lost to a fever and an infection. Incoherent, dazed, and in agonizing pain, the doctor said they were simply waiting for Sam to die.

Goodnight was to sit by Sam's side that night. The next morning, Sam was gone, and Goody's eyes never lost their haunted look ever again.

One of the pillows was found in the fireplace. No one ever said a thing.

* * *

Red Harvest and Emma Cullen were caught in an ambush. Without Sam, those that remained were wild and cared little for their lives. The world was too cruel, and if they were going to die anyway, then they might as well take a few of these bastards with them.

Red died first, protecting Emma while she reloaded her rifle. He died with honor.

Emma took six shots to the gut before she fell. She died smiling.

* * *

Four were left. Goody was showing his age, the walls of his mind crumbling down around him. He was trapped in the past, and soon he recognized none of them. His ghosts were real, and his companions were not. Billy faded into a specter himself, but still Goody didn't see him.

Goodnight died of a heart attack twenty years after Rose Creek.

Billy died three hours later. Diagnosis: a broken heart.

* * *

Two remained. Vasquez and Faraday had watched their friends leave them, one by one, until they were all that was left. Goody's sickness of the mind had aged them, and they felt decades older than they truly were. Outside their house lay seven graves. Jack's was empty, his body buried next to his beloved Leni's on a cliff overlooking the sea. Two more would join them soon, or so Alejandro suspected.

Joshua's old wounds constantly ached, and he soon lost the ability to walk unaided. Five years into the new century, he was bound to a wheelchair, never to walk again.

Alejandro lost his sight in a slow, terrifying way, his eyes clouding over until he could see nothing but darkness. He prayed day and night to remember Joshua's face, but he soon began to forget.

* * *

1906\. They should have been dead long ago, and yet they lingered, neither willing to die first and leave the other behind.

* * *

An unusually cold winter tore through the valley, and they weren't seen in town for weeks. When the chill had passed, the sheriff came calling, riding through the snow, hoping for the best and fearing for the worst.

Inside, no fire burned. No wood creaked under Alejandro's careful footsteps. The wheelchair gathered dust in a corner. He slowly made his way to the bed, already knowing what he would find...or at least, he thought he did.

There they lay, side by side, their skin the ashen grey of the dead, their lips blue from the cold. No one could tell when they had passed. It could have been weeks. It could have been days. It could have been mere hours.

When the quilt was pulled back, the sheriff saw that their hands were clasped together. They had simply passed in their sleep, together in death as they had been in life.

* * *

Nine graves stand somewhere in a valley.

Behind them, a rose bush blooms every spring.

* * *

_Epilogue_

The morning bell rang.

Alejandro's eyes slowly fluttered open, the soft glow of the sunrise warming the dark wood of the cabin's walls.

The cabin? He hadn't lived in a cabin since...since he had waited for Joshua to finish healing. The cabin that sat on the edge of Leni Frankel's farmland. The cabin that her first husband had built when they first moved to Rose Creek.

The cabin where Joshua had finally healed, not just in body, but in soul too. They had spent three priceless months in this cabin, learning to work around Joshua's lame leg, his scarred hands, his aches and pains. Together, they had become whole again, making love nearly every night, unafraid of the cruelty of fate.

It was the first place Alejandro had ever truly called home.

He turned to his right, barely daring to hope...

And there was Joshua Faraday, his skin smooth and unblemished, his smile warm and adoring, soft in a way that he only ever was with Vasquez. Gone were the ravages of age and the scars of their victory. The carefree and fun-loving sparkle had returned to his eyes, his green irises bright with silent laughter and joy.

Alejandro remembered all too well how dull his lover's eyes had been in the end, before Alejandro became blind, lost in the unforgiving darkness. Now, though...

_"¿...Josué?"_

"Alejandro."

"Are we...?"

"Yes."

"Is this...?"

"I think so."

"So the others are..."

"Why don't we find out, hm?"

* * *

Hand in hand and finally at peace, the last of The Magnificent Seven stepped out into the light and into their grand reward.

The voices of their friends, no, their _family_ were sweeter than any angelic choir could ever be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Usually I have a song in mind when I write things, but this time all I heard was silence.


End file.
